Walt Brewer: Trust and Individual Control

This posted to smartgrid@ostp.gov by Walt Brewer

Response to Q1. No, the Smart Meter should not be the Primary Gateway. Attempting to use the smart meter as the primary gateway poses a significant risk to the public acceptance of the program - particularly with regards to the demand response signals. There are two primary issues I see with the use of the smart meter as the primary gateway; Trust and Meter Lifespan. The trust issue is associated with providing control of the gateway to the utilities. It may be perceived that the utilities have a conflict of interest with regard to which segment of end users are impacted by grid power events as the utilities valuation of certain users may differ.

Allowing users to control "opt in" or "opt out" decisions for individual demand response events may be critical to acceptance and the Smart Meter as a Primary Gateway is not conducive to this. Second: The anticipated lifespan on residential power meters is 20 years. To allow for upgrades as technology advances the Smart Meter functions should be limited to reporting the power consumption to the utilities. The rest of the gateway functions should be integrated into devices or interfaces that can be updated far more frequently.

Response to Q2. An IP based Data Gateway is the most logical network for communicating price data, demand response, and gathering internal energy usage data on a voluntary basis. This will allow the ESIs and utilities to experiment dynamically with a variety of methods for demand response While keeping the utility models simplified.

Response to Q3. There are a number of architectures that could be used to support innovation in home energy services. The most obvious architecture is publishing real time pricing in formats that ESI companies can use to make graduated usage decisions. Other options include creating a scale which represents the risk of localized power quality or power capacity related events that would allow a consumer defined "low value" power consumption to be turned off automatically.

I view a primary requirement for wide spread acceptance of demand response systems in the United States that it is voluntary to make the default opt-in with per incident option to opt-out of the demand response action. I don't think a per incident opt-out will have a significant impact on any given event - but failing to include this option I believe will reduce the acceptance of this program by the general public.

Walt Brewer